The business world fears a government solution to the health cost crisis that has risen 38% since 2001 in retaliation for the relatively effective hold on costs during the 90s. If their fear is justified then the captains of industry and the sergeants of small business should unite and fight the obvious profiteering of the medical industry and medical insurance companies. If a giant company like Ford can rollover on the directive of insurance companies, then something is rotten in the economy. It cost Ford in 2003 $3.2 billion to insure 560,000 employees, according to the Washington Post, adding $1000 to the cost of every Ford vehicle produced in the United States. Ever increasing small businesses are dumping medical insurance for their employees, only aggravating the long standing problem of the uninsured. If sprawling corporations do not have the backbone to resist this piracy perpetrated by members of their own capitalistic realm, then who but the government can carry the flag?
To avoid this inevitability these soldiers of industry must pick up the flag and charge the pirates with the cry “Don’t tread on us — enough is enough!” If they would shed their competitive spirit long enough to forge a solid front, together with small business that suffer the most, and demand an accounting from units of medicine and insurance companies, both of which are suspect of price gouging because of close to the vest operations that are as secretive as the CIA.
Why, for instance, should a single catastrophic illness in Utah, cause panic among the insurance companies throughout the nation? Is it not logical that the effects of catastrophic illness can easily be absorbed by a huge, nationwide pool? Would it not be sensible for all neighboring small businesses be under the umbrella of neighboring corporations and thus buy into their plans? Why should a small business made to be vulnerable in their negotiations with an insurance company and be singled out as a potential for widespread plague? And where is the level playing field when one small company is allowed to opt out of a plan while another down the street morally clings to its plan despite very questionable inflationary costs?
Just because single payer advocates of universal health claim to own the answer, should not preclude the business world from advocating something similar by uniting their own influence and purchasing power. Rolling over dead is a badge of shame that proud employers should avoid or else leave themselves vulnerable to a government take over in supplying equitable health care for the nation’s workers.
Copyright © 2004 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: June 21, 2004.